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ATVs are leading injury source for youth on farm

Researchers at the National Farm Medicine Center scour aginjurynews.org to find farm injuries and deaths.

Apr 27, 2018

Researchers at the National Farm Medicine Center are building and testing rural health informatics tools to enhance the collection and dissemination of publicly available injury case data from news reports as there is no central repository of agricultural injury data, and federal childhood ag injury surveillance has ended.

At the heart of the research is http://www.aginjurynews.org/, the largest publicly-available dataset of its kind, built by the National Farm Medicine Center, Marshfield Clinic Research Institute, Marshfield, Wis.

“We continue to see new and innovative uses of this growing dataset by many audiences beyond academia including insurers, lenders, manufacturers, and other agribusiness interested in the success and longevity of ag operations,” said Weichelt, principal investigator of the AgInjuryNews initiative.

The review of news reports revealed:

Tractors were the most common injury source (fatal and non-fatal) across all age groups, 32% of the 1,345 victims.

The leading injury source among the 225 youth victims (ages 0-17) was all-terrain vehicles (33%).

In the absence of a national surveillance program for agriculture-related injuries among U.S. adults and children, news media and similar reports have become increasingly valuable for ag safety stakeholders. AgInjuryNews.org has more than 350 registered users. To create an account, visit www.AgInjuryNews.org and click “Register”. A new version of AgInjuryNews.org is scheduled for release in June 2018. In addition to adding international data, the site will include more options for searching and filtering, data visualization, and customizable email delivery of reports.

“Custom email alerts will allow users to choose what types of injury reports they want to see and how often they want to receive them,” Weichelt said. “For example, someone might want weekly reports of ATV-related adult injuries, or skid steer-related youth injuries from a particular state or region.”

The authors acknowledge there are limitations to mining injury data from news reports, including the fact that not all agricultural fatalities are reported in the media. Non-fatal injuries are thought to be particularly underreported.